Lego – Page 6 – Life In A Word

Not-So-Sweet Jesus

If you take a stroll down your supermarket’s greeting card aisle today, you’ll find Valentine’s Day cards long gone and Easter cards in full force. It’s only the start of Lent, yet the aisle is bursting bright with pink bunnies, yellow chicks, and painted eggs. I won’t be sending Easter cards this year (haven’t done so since my kids were little) but I will give up something for Lent. I’m thinking “foods with added sugar”.

I know what you’re thinking. We live in an age where giving up tempting foods isn’t as difficult as it used to be. Whole foods are so available we have an entire chain of stores called “Whole Foods”. Sugar has so many alternatives I should revise my sacrifice to “foods with added sweeteners“. Even processed foods have matured to where “healthy snacks” are pleasing to the palate. I have options.

Doesn’t matter. Dropping added sugar will still be a challenge. My desk drawer (second one down on the left if you’d like to help yourself) is replete with black and red licorice, and some form of chocolate, be it a bar, a cookie, or those little baking morsels straight out of the bag. Giving up licorice for forty-six days and nights won’t be a stretch, but NO chocolate for all of March and half of April sounds like an eternity. What can I say? Everyone has a weakness and mine is chocolate. It speaks to me from my closed drawer with “come hither” seductiveness.

I’ll bet you’ll find thousands of blog posts about chocolate with a quick search. I’ll bet you’ll find entire blogs about the sweet stuff. I just checked my blog’s history and unearthed a dozen takes on chocolate (including this one from a year ago talking about the things people give up for Lent. Chocolate tops the list). So let’s make it a baker’s dozen because I invented a chocolate challenge. I call it the “85 Percent Ascent”.

Let me explain. There was a time when I liked my coffee sweeter than a Starbucks Sugar Cookie Frappuccino. Together with artificial creamer I’d dump in sugar cubes or pour the white stuff straight from whatever you call those pourable glass containers. That was a long, long time ago. At some point (probably, er definitely my college year abroad in Italy) I realized coffee tasted pretty good all by itself. I started to wonder why you’d “taint” coffee by adding the other stuff. But let’s be real: it’s not like you go from Frappuccino to Americano cold turkey. You’ve got to ease into the one extreme from the other. Slowly I backed down the sugar (like years-slowly). Slowly I backed down the creamer. One day I eliminated the sugar altogether. Today, I still go with a tablespoon of (almond-coconut non-dairy no-sugar) “creamer” but otherwise it’s straight dark-roasted coffee for me. I even fancy an espresso shot every now and then.

It’s a good analogy for my Percent Ascent challenge. 85% cocoa content is seriously dark chocolate (meaning not sweet at all). If your go-to is a Hershey’s Bar or a Milky Way you’re down below 50%. And moving from 50% to 85% is a serious ascent with chocolate. It’s like standing on top of Kilimanjaro and seeing how much further you have to go to summit Everest.

A recent article on chocolate lists nine criteria for the healthiest and best-tasting bars in the world, including:

The first ingredient must be cocoa, cocoa mass, or chocolate liquor (not sugar or milk chocolate). In other words, put down the Nestle’s Crunch; it’s not even close.
Ingredients must include real cocoa butter instead of (cheaper) vegetable oils. 95% of America’s chocolate manufacturers just dropped out of the race.
The cocoa must come from an “Equator country” like Ivory Coast, Ghana, or Peru.
The bar should be labeled “Organic” and/or “Non-GMO”.
Bonus points: should be fairly traded and ethically harvested.

As if the search isn’t already difficult, NOW you have to go with >85% cocoa content. Not so hard to find actually, especially if you go online. I purchased a bar from five different manufacturers meeting every one of the above criteria, including Green & Black’s from the UK, and Theo from Seattle. All five bars fall between 85% and 90% cocoa content (and yes, 100% is an option). All five use scary words like “strong”, “super black”, and “extreme” to describe their product. Not gonna lie; I’m a little nervous to take a bite.

As bitter as these chocolates are sure to be, I still have to give them up for Lent. Every one of them has “added sugar” (albeit way down on the ingredients list). So let’s just agree – I’m not going to break my Lenten covenant on a food that doesn’t even taste sweet. Think I’ll opt for a piece of fruit instead. I just hope it doesn’t come from the Garden of Eden.

Some content sourced from the “Experience Life” / Life Time article, “How to Find the Healthiest Dark Chocolate”.

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Lego Grand Piano – Update #7

(Read about how this project got started in Let’s Make Music!)

I worked outside of the box again this week. Bag #7 – of 21 bags of pieces – assembled a second layer on top of the section I can’t yet attach to the bigger section behind it. From “Last week” to “This week”, you can see I worked almost entirely in black, which suggests I’m creating more of the outside of the piano.

Despite the majestic wash of Debussy’s “La Mer”, Bag #7 was completed in less than thirty minutes, with only one heart-pounding moment where I thought I’d left out pieces in the Bag #6 build. Thank goodness I was wrong. Still on track.

Running Build Time: 6.0 hours. Musical accompaniment: Debussy’s La Mer and Prélude à l’aprés-midi d’un Faune (try and say that ten times fast). Leftover pieces: One (clearly an extra, whew!)

Conductor’s Note: Today’s build wasn’t very exciting, so it helped to have Debussy booming in the background. However, as I turned the page of Mr. Instruction Manual in anticipation of Bag #8, I saw pictures of… long, thin, reed-like pieces. Holy buckets, Maestro, it’s time to make this piano a stringed instrument!

Look What the Catfish Dragged In

When I consider my options at a seafood restaurant, I go for halibut or sea bass. Both are offered wild-caught (a healthier approach than farmed). Both have a distinctive flavor and pair well with a variety of sauces. But once in a great while I come across catfish on the menu. I confess to never having tried it. The jury’s still out on whether catfish is a good choice vs. utterly lacking in flavor. Probably depends on the prep. All I know is, a catfish is a bottom feeder. If it’s anything like con man Ali Ayad, it really is lacking in flavor.

In the world of tech, catfishing is a disturbing practice. The “fisher” creates a false online persona (photo, bio, accounts), then trolls social media looking to establish relationships, usually for financial gain. The victim is lulled into a false sense of security through casual texting and email conversations, until he or she unwittingly hands over the money or even worse, gives access to personal information. Favorite catfishing targets: senior citizens and those looking for love.

A well-known example of catfishing involved former American football player Manti Te’o (a graduate of my alma mater, I’m embarrassed to say). Te’o developed an online relationship with a woman at Stanford University just as his name was starting to make headlines as a Heisman Trophy candidate. Te’o pulled heartstrings when he revealed to the sports media his girlfriend had leukemia. It took a full-blown investigation to determine not only the false persona of Teo’s girlfriend but also the con behind it: a childhood friend of Te’o’s who was in love with him. The resulting embarrassment undoubtedly affected his future NFL prospects.

Ali Ayad is our latest example of catfishing and his story is a whole lot more disturbing than Manti Te’o’s. Ayad started digital design company Madbird in 2020, from nothing but clicks on the keyboard. He invented a corporate website and claimed a random London street address as his office. He created a fake co-founder, stole photos of real people to build the rest of his executive staff, and developed a resume of high-profile clients he never worked for (complete with testimonials). Then he went in search of real people around the globe to put in the long hours to get Madbird off the ground.

It almost worked. Ayad hired fifty employees in a matter of months, convincing each to walk away from real jobs to work from home on commission, with the promise of a fixed salary after six months. One employee pitched the company to over 10,000 contacts, becoming Madbird’s “Employee of the Month”. Others in other countries uprooted their lives, anticipating Madbird as their ticket to eventual relocation to the UK. No client deals were ever closed and no commissions were ever paid.

Then Ayad made a misstep. He hired Gemma Brett, a designer from West London. Two weeks into her employment Brett innocently mapped the commute to Madbird’s offices. The street address turned out to be a building of residential flats. Suspicious, Brett engaged another employee to dig further into the company, and Madbird’s inauthenticity started to reveal itself. The BBC got wind of the story and conducted a thorough investigation, which you can read about here. The extent of Ayad’s charade will have you shaking your head. If nothing else, watch the on-street interview towards the end of the article where reporter Catrin Nye catches Ayad off-guard. Even in this confrontation Ayad believes he’s done nothing wrong.

Ayad reminds me of Rumplestiltskin spinning gold from straw; he’s just a lot more attractive and charismatic than the old buzzard from the Grimm fairy tale. Ayad’s also tech-savvy enough to convince perfectly intelligent people to go for his gold, which leaves me with two questions. Why did Ayad go to such lengths to start a company whose foundation was destined to crumble? And what are the consequences of his actions?

Nature’s catfish are typically harmless but there’s also a particularly nasty one, nicknamed the striped eel for its markings and shape. This catfish has hidden poisonous stingers in its fins. Handle with care; in rare cases, people have died from its venom. Maybe our man Ali Ayad is not just catfishing; he’s a bona fide striped eel. A bottom-feeder, still lurking, ready to poison his next victim. Watch out.

Some content sourced from the UK Insight article, “Jobfished: the con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agency”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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Lego Grand Piano – Update #6

(Read about how this project got started in Let’s Make Music!)

I worked outside of the box this week – literally. Bag #6 – of 21 bags of pieces – assembled into a portion of the piano I can’t attach to the section I’ve built so far. Its width suggests it’s part of the front of the instrument (just behind the keyboard) and it has a few moving parts, but darned if I can figure out how it’s going to connect.

Despite the furious background rush of a Prokofiev piano concerto, I completed this section with calm and confidence in just forty minutes. Either I’m getting better at this or the bags of pieces are shrinking.

Running Build Time: 5.6 hours. Musical accompaniment: Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major. Leftover pieces: Zero (again!)

Conductor’s Note: The Prokofiev Concerto and Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto No. 5 (accompanying the Bag #2 assembly) were both included in the soundtrack of “The Competition”, a 1980 film starring a young Richard Dreyfuss and even younger Amy Irving. If you’re a fan of classical piano, it’s a must-see.

The Time of My Life

Yesterday I was sitting at my desk thinking, “Hey Dave, time’s a-ticking. Gotta come up with a topic for tomorrow’s post”. I stared at the clock, considering a few interesting ideas. The slender second-hand edged ever closer to the next minute, to the next hour, time literally passing before my eyes. Suddenly it hit me. My topic. Time. More to the point, clocks. To which I lob an interesting question your way: analog or digital?

My house is full of inanimate objects screaming for attention. When I’m lost in thought and staring into space, a certain something in the room starts to say, “Pick me! PICK ME!” in a desperate attempt to become a blog post. Today my desk clock actually pulled it off. I was dead set on a couple other topics until my clock somehow ticked its way to the top of the list. Perhaps today’s title should’ve been, “A Moment in Time”.

We’re not talking about just any desk clock, mind you. The little guy you see here (all of 2.5″ wide by 3″ high) is a Seth Thomas “Travel Carriage Alarm Clock”, a quartz analog model made by the hundreds of thousands in China. You can find one online for $14.99, the affordability belying its simple elegance. I chose this clock as a gift from Hewlett-Packard (HP) on the fifth anniversary of my employment back in 2002.

I had better choices than an analog clock, but the Seth Thomas somehow captivated me. Even twenty years ago when I got it, a desk clock waxed nostalgic, especially with arrow-capped hands and Roman numerals. The “Promise” model also makes a pleasing little tick-tock-tick-tock sound as the second-hand sweeps the minutes away.

If my four-year-old granddaughter were reading this post she’d ask her dad what analog means. Let’s face it; my granddaughter’s growing up in a wholly digital world. Her watch, her smartphone, her computer, and the clocks she displays in her future house will exhibit squarish lifeless numerals instead of graceful minute and hour hands. She’ll “tell time” the way McDonald’s cashiers push the hamburger key instead of entering the amount. No interpretation required.

I took a stroll around my house and counted three analog clocks, each with sentimental value. Besides my Seth Thomas, we have an intricate cuckoo clock we purchased in Germany (with the mechanics made in Switzerland), and a horse-head clock we’ve had forever (which no longer works but still graces our bedroom wall). Our digital timepieces are many more in number yet I still prefer the soothing tick-tick of analog hands, as well as the lazy swing of the cuckoo clock pendulum.

When I was a kid, I grew up in the presence of a formal grandfather clock, standing guard in the curve of our entryway staircase. I can still hear its chimes, with a higher pitch than you’d expect from its heavy-framed stature. My bedroom was close enough to hear the bells of the hour in the middle of the night, a gentle reminder it was time to get some sleep. Whenever I wind our cuckoo clock today, I remember my dad doing the same thing with the grandfather all those years ago.

Since we’re talking about analog, I owe my wristwatches a few words. I have eight of them and most stopped ticking a long time ago. Two are also from HP anniversaries (What the heck, were timepieces my only choices?) but three others have more significance. One carries the logo of my father’s seafood restaurant. I still have the Snoopy watch I believe was my very first timepiece (my granddaughter wouldn’t know Snoopy either, sigh). I also have my first “big-boy” watch; a gold Pulsar with matching hands on a cream-colored face. Yes, I may be wearing a sleek digital Fitbit as I type but I always wear one of my analog watches on special occasions. At least, one that still works.

[Author’s Note: I’m a little unnerved to see each of my wristwatches in the above photos is stopped at the exact… same… time. I didn’t do this! Why would I do this? Either someone’s been playing in my watch drawer or my house is haunted. Maybe both.]

I can’t decide if my granddaughter will miss out with the lack of analog in her life. She’ll take trips where she’ll see quaint clocks high up in the steeples of New England churches. She’ll take a hop-on-hop-off double-decker bus through London, passing under the shadow of Big Ben. She may even make it to the Old Town Square in Prague to see the famous Astronomical Clock, still operating since 1410. But will she know how to tell the time? Time will tell (ha). More likely, her grandfather will teach her how.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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Lego Grand Piano – Update #5

I describe this week’s movement as “allegretto”, or “light and cheerful” (read about my hesitant warm-up in Let’s Make Music!). I completed the build of Bag #5 – of 21 bags of pieces – in a cool 46 minutes. Maybe I’m finding the rhythm of this piece, though I did have a tense moment where two critical blocks were installed the wrong way and I had to disassemble several steps to get them right. Whew – that was close!

Dare I say, we’re starting to see hints of the finished product. Those four circles in the “this week” photo are part of what you’ll see when the piano lid is open. All those little yellow “grabbers” will cradle the piano strings. To the rear, we’re seeing some of the graceful curves of the instrument’s black body.

Simple math tells us we’re approaching 25% completion of the build. To put it another way, our concerto is about to wrap up the first of its four movements.

Running Build Time: 5.0 hours. Musical accompaniment: Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Leftover pieces: ZERO! (Holy cow – how did that happen?)

Conductor’s Note: I’m about 700 pieces into the build and this instrument is getting heavy. Now I understand why you need special movers to relocate a piano.

Triple Booked

The Oxford University Press, a publisher for more than 700 years, churns out 6,000 physical titles a year despite today’s electronic alternatives. Oxford focuses on educational materials, including dozens of dictionaries. At one time the Press had the exclusive right to print the King James Version of the Bible. I know Oxford for one other reason, however: their 21-volume illustrated collection of the works of Charles Dickens.

I’ll bet you have a collection of something yourself, where the number of items in the lot goes beyond pure necessity. We have more Christmas ornaments than any reasonably-sized tree can hold. We have more mugs than we’ll ever use for coffee or tea. My brother seems to collect cars (or maybe he really does drive them all). Whatever feeds our need to collect also fuels our stubbornness to ever let these items go.

Such is the case with my Dickens collection. When I was in my twenties I got a mailer from Oxford Press advertising “a Dickens book a month”. Must’ve been inexpensive back then, and somehow the collection spoke to me even though I’d never read a lick of Dickens. Maybe I envisioned my future dwelling with shelves of classic literature (never happened). Several decades after I purchased the last Dickens I still haven’t read a page, but the books sure look nice all standing in a row. I’ll never get rid of them.

This talk of Dickens and collecting is just a preface to my real topic today. I’d like you to meet PixxiBook. Maybe you don’t collect books (outside of those you purchase on your e-reader) but ask yourself: what if you could have your blog posts pressed into books worthy of your coffee table? That’s what PixxiBook does, and they do it well.

PixxiBook is one of those I-wish-I’d-thought-of-it businesses. The husband and wife behind the scenes did what most startups do: create a business based on a personal need. “Tim and Sabrina” wanted to convert their travel blog into a book but realized the process takes more time and effort than most people are willing to invest. So they designed a computer program to do the work instead. Then they partnered with a printing press, aligned with WordPress and a few other blogging hosts, and a business was born.

I’m not sure whether Tim or Sabrina gets the credit, but here’s the marketing genius of Pixxibook (and the point where you’ll stop reading this post). You can create your PixxiBooks from your blog now… and instantly preview the finished product. No charge. Just go to Pixxibook’s website, enter your blog’s URL, and watch the computer program crunch through your posts to create your books. If you like what you see, you can purchase the real thing. When my wife ordered my PixxiBooks as a 60th birthday present, they were printed and shipped so quickly I’d only written two new posts by the time I got them. Seven years of weekly posts published in three elegant volumes. Life In A Word is now a “triple-booked” anthology.

Earlier I mentioned your coffee table, and how PixxiBook is worthy of its surface. Not quite true. Some of you – especially you non-bloggers – are thinking, “Nobody’s gonna leaf through old blog posts, Dave”. Hey, I agree with you. Blog posts are read and digested, and then we move on to other things. So why pay for books?

Go back to my Dickens’ collection for the answer. Those Oxford Press gems are mine. Not my wife’s, not my dog’s, not someone’s who we invite over for a dinner party. Mine. I can admire them from across the room, leaf through one every now and then, or maybe finally start to read Oliver Twist. Doesn’t really matter what I do with them. Just like my PixxiBooks. They’re a nice collectible and worthy of my shelf space. I’m never getting rid of them.

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Lego Grand Piano – Update #4

Today’s portion of the concert was legato or “smooth” (read about my hesitant warm-up in Let’s Make Music!), though I won’t go so far as to say “effortless”. The only real drama with Bag #4 – of 21 bags of pieces – was the one little piece that skitted off my desk and tried to escape the room. Caught the little bugger before he got too far.

All Bag #4 pieces assemble to a single structure: the light-colored “deck” you see here with the red pieces towards the top and the grey pieces to the right. Those little yellow grabbers will eventually secure the piano strings.

The second photo is a good look at the piano “mechanics”. This view would be as if you were sitting at the bench looking directly at the keys.

Running Build Time: 4.2 hours. Musical accompaniment: Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Leftover pieces: 3

Conductor’s Notes: Mr. Instruction Manual included a couple extra pages today; pictures to show me how to “turn on” the piano by pushing a button on the battery pack. Once I did, the battery pack started flashing. Had to disconnect a cable to make it quit. Wish I knew what that was all about. Patience, maestro, patience.

Just Off the Podium

This time of year I find myself doing a little cyber “spring cleaning”. I know, it’s not spring yet and I could simply busy an alcohol wipe on the keyboard or fog the monitor with Windex, but I’m talking about electronic purging here: files, emails, photos, and the like. I even reset passwords. When I’m done giving the Delete button a workout I pick up my laptop and hope for something more light-as-a-feather. Nope, but at least my digital house is in order for another year. Just like my blog.

The Winter Olympics start tomorrow, did’ja know? (You didn’t? Shame on you! Pay more attention!) With the fifteen-hour time difference to Colorado I’ll be lucky to catch ten percent of the action, but I still seek out the good stuff. Downhill skiing and figure skating are my favorites. So much skill and grace there, with the occasional feel-good story thrown in for the heartstrings. But skill and grace only matter if they amount to medals, right? We hang our hats on gold or silver triumphs, even bronze. As for the poor lass or lad in fourth place? Hardly a mention. Fourth place is swept harshly into the performance dustpan, to be dumped on a heap of lesser statistics seldom referenced again. Fourth place can be a mere hundredth of something from the medals podium. Inches. Seconds. Points.

Fourth place at the Olympics is an apt way to describe a lot of topics I consider for my weekly blog posts. You see, part of my writing madness method is to cull interesting bits from my daily newsfeed; fodder for future posts. I store these bits in an electronic folder and then pull back the curtain when I need a topic. But not just any topic, loyal readers. Heavens no, my topics don’t make the medal stand unless they successfully sift through five filters:

Is the topic substantial enough for an entire post?
Is the topic somewhat off the beaten path of “breaking news”?
Is the topic worth a little more research (or as I like to call it, “continuing education”)?
Is the topic an easy target for grins and giggles?
Can I weave a personal memory or two into the topic’s fabric?

Take away just one filter and the topic isn’t a winner. No medal… er, post for you, little news story. Instead, the topic sits idle in the folder gathering cyber-dust until I decide it’s never going to make the cut. Then I “Delete”. Before I do this time, however, I thought you’d enjoy a smattering of the near misses; the fourth-place finishes if you will. Here are ten interesting-but-not-quite-good-enough topics sitting just off the podium:

Asparagus. A recipe for the healthy, non-cruciferous vegetable was published smack dab in the middle of an official Belgian law database, side-by-side with national legislation and royal decrees. Food for thought?
Mercury (the planet). A European-Japanese space probe passed within 124 miles of the Mercury’s 800°F surface on its seven-year mission, collecting images and sending them back to Earth. Now that’s what I call “hot shots”.
Qantas. Last May the airline offered a “flight to nowhere” for travel-starved Australians wanting a better view of the late-month supermoon. Tickets ran upwards of $1,000 USD and sold out immediately. Travel-starved indeed.
Cannabis. If you live in Ontario, Canada, Uber Eats will be happy to deliver an order of recreational cannabis to your front door. I’m sure this new service makes the country’s rampant illegal pot producers very happy.
Robots. The world’s first living robots (or “xenobots”), each less than a millimeter wide, can now reproduce. They could already move about, work together, and self-heal before this more disturbing evolution. In a word, YIKES!
Style. Billionaire heiress Ivy Getty got married last November at San Francisco’s City Hall in a wedding dress covered with mirror shards. She referred to her dress as “… just like everything I could’ve dreamed of and more.” Really? I don’t think I want to meet Ivy Getty.
Taco Bell. The Bell now offers a monthly taco subscription for those who join their rewards program. $10 gets you a free taco every day of the month. The Bell saw a 20% increase in rewards program membership when they began offering the subscription. Confirmed: we Americans are hopelessly addicted to fast food.
Bees. May 20th is World Bee Day. You can find a lot of interesting trivia about bees on the Web. They communicate by dancing. They use tools. They get mad if they haven’t eaten in a while. The more you learn about bees, the more you realize they’ll probably take over the world one day.
Contact Lenses. A company has designed the first “smart” contact lens, capable of delivering real-time information to the eye. The lens connects to your smartphone and generates an image similar to what you’d see on your screen. So the next time you see someone with “eyes glazed over”, don’t be so sure they’re falling asleep.
Millennium Tower – A 58-story building in downtown San Francisco has been leaning to the northwest at a rate of 3 inches per year, for a total of 24 inches so far. If I were one of the owners of the building’s 419 luxury apartments I wouldn’t be sleeping so well. I say get ahold of engineers in Pisa, Italy. Their world-famous leaning tower is predicted to remain standing for another 200 years.

Maybe one of these topics grabs your attention and you want to learn more. Go for it. In fact, write a blog post about it. I’ll read your version of the story and maybe say, “Crud; missed a good one there.” But probably not, because I didn’t consider the topic podium-worthy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to watch the Olympics (fifteen hours after the fact). I don’t want to miss those medal ceremonies.

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Lego Grand Piano – Update #3

Today’s portion of the concert was difficult (read about my hesitant warm-up in Let’s Make Music!). Bag #3 – of 21 bags of pieces – was smaller than the first two so I figured this step would go quickly. Wrong. Bag #3 contained tiny, tiny pieces and I don’t have nimble, nimble fingers!

The picture here is the “before Bag #3” while the picture below is the “after”. Notice the difference? There’s now a series of posts running upper left to lower right like a fence. I can make the posts move up and down with my finger. Inner workings of the piano keys!

Running Build Time: 3.3 hours. Musical accompaniment: Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A. Leftover pieces: 2

Conductor’s Notes: I’m starting to get comfortable with leftover pieces. I’ve ended up with a few after each bag so far. Doesn’t mean I don’t go back and check my work to be sure I didn’t overlook a step. Also, I couldn’t find a piece today. I thought Lego forgot to put it in the box. Took me three scourings of my Bag #3 pile of pieces (and a little sweat) before I realized it was sitting there right in front of me. Utterly unnerving.

Beyond Words

Life has moments of joyful happiness, overwhelming sadness, breathtaking awe, and quiet gratitude. Also moments – a select few – where these emotions come together as a powerful force of transcendence. This was a week with one of those moments. As I reflect (and a gaze at the Pacific Ocean is the perfect way to do so), I realize the moment deserves my undivided attention. My complete focus. So I pause, lift my hands from the keyboard, and simply say…….. we’ll chat again next week.

I Just Turned 59.99589!

It may interest you to know there are real Memory Lanes in the bedroom communities of every American state. Look them up on Google Maps (I stopped searching after finding dozens.) Must be fun to be one of those residents and see the look on someone’s face when you give them your address. No, I don’t know anyone who lives on Memory Lane, but me, I kind of do; one with no stripes or sidewalks. Mine is paved with sixty years of material, some of it worth a visit; other items best left alone. All of this “Dave” stuff is somewhere between my ears and today it’s time for a big – okay, little – reveal.

59.99589. If you’re reading this post the day it was published, I’ve just revealed my age to ridiculous exactness. The 0.99589 amounts to 363 out of the past 365 days. You could say I’m still in my late fifties (very late, Dave), but more accurately you’ll say I’m either sixty on the dot or a mere forty-eight hours removed from it. Do I feel old now? Of course not! Er, until I calculate my age in months. I’ve spent 720 of those bad boys. For Pete’s sake, what have I been doing all my life?

Well, let me answer that question. In fact, let’s make it a game because then you get to play too. Think about the last sixty years (or in your case, however many decades you’ve been around). Now let’s create a list – off the top of our graying heads – of up to ten significant world events in the timeframe of our years. No, no, no; not the events you learned in the history books, but the ones with lasting, maybe even personal impact. Here are mine, in no particular order:

9/11 (2001)
COVID-19 (2020-???)
San Francisco Bay Area earthquake (1989)
Space Shuttle Challenger (1986)
America’s war in Afghanistan (2001-2021)
Apollo rockets (1961-1972)
Colorado’s Black Forest wildfire (2013)

I don’t have enough time to explain my choices (after all, I only have forty-eight hours until I”m a “sexy-genarian”) but trust me; these seven came to mind in a heartbeat. Now arrange them in chronological order to paint an interesting picture. My childhood was inspired by Apollo rocket launches (courtesy of black-and-white TV’s); my young adult years by two disasters – the Challenger explosion and the devastating earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area; and my adult years by big-bad-ticket items like terrorism, war, wildfire, and a global pandemic. Sadly, not one of these events makes anyone’s “good list” (am I a product of headline news or what?). But that’s not to say my sixty years have been altogether bad. Quite the contrary.

Now, here’s where the game gets more interesting. Make a similar list as above, but include up to ten significant events of a personal nature. These are the formative moments, where you’re not the same person after they happened as you were before. Leave off relationships (including marriage) and having kids, because most of us have or will have those in common. Let’s see now. My eyes are closed, I’m in a thoughtful trance, and I’m typing, all at the same time (a man of many talents, no?) Okay, pencils down. Here’s my “formative” list, also in no particular order:

Corrective eye surgery (1977)
I-survived-but-the-car-didn’t rollover (1984)
Immersive year of studies in Rome, Italy (1982-83)
Traded California’s coast for Colorado’s Rockies (1993)
First job <McDonald’s> (1975)
All things Boy Scouts (1973-1978)
Architecture career ends, tech career begins (1993)
All things basketball (1974-1979)

Again, I’d love to wax on about my choices but I’d turn 61 before I’d be done typing. Instead, sort my formatives from earliest to most recent. Notice anything? All happened between the ages of 10 and 30. My “clay was molded’ in a mere one-third of my lifetime. Not really true, of course. Ages 1-10 – none of us remember much of those. But now I hear you saying, “So Dave, what have you been doing for the last thirty years?” Well, you know the answer already The same thing as most every other red-blooded American male. Raising a family. Making a living. Loving my wife. Loving my life.

I predict my sixties will be my greatest decade; just you wait and see. I’ll witness another significant world event or two (maybe even a “good one”!) I’ll break my thirty-year run of nothing and come up with at least one more formative experience. I’ll write another 520 blog posts (and you’ll block a chunk of your calendar to read them). But let’s be real; this is just musings about my sixties. I’m only in my fifties. My account still shows a credit of forty-eight hours.

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Lego Grand Piano – Update #2

The concert is underway! (read about my hesitant warm-up in the post Let’s Make Music!). Bag #2 – of 21 bags of pieces – started out innocently enough, with big pieces and easy assembly. My maestro-confidence overfloweth.

Suddenly things got v-e-r-y complicated in Mr. Instruction Manual. Tiny, tiny pieces! Mechanical components! Cables! Batteries! Here’s last week’s build, and then below, this week’s additions for comparison. Enlarge the second photo for a better look at the colorful, scary-looking “spindle”, running top left to bottom right. I have no idea what it’s for but it connects to the gray/white motor (at least I think it’s a motor) just behind it. I count forty-five little Legos on the spindle, each required to be positioned exactly as you see them. Almost walked off the stage when I was done with that step.

Running build time: 2.5 hours. Musical accompaniment: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor” (three times through!) Leftover pieces: 5 (Conductor’s note: Last week I only had 1 leftover piece. 5 = concern. I need to double-check this week’s work before moving forward. Safe to say you can’t go back and “repair” after the fact).

A Tale of Unwell Words

The symptoms started ten days ago. I was lying in bed, beginning Chapter 42 of Ruta Sepetys’ captivating WWII novel Between Shades of Gray when suddenly, a lower-case “a” popped out through my e-reader’s glass and just sat there on the surface. I casually brushed it away. Not two pages later, an entire “the” surfaced and slid sickeningly down the screen. I flicked that away too. But then a whole sentence coughed up and I knew I couldn’t ignore it any longer. A terrible thought entered my mind. Crud, my Kindle has COVID.

It’s not like my e-reader hasn’t been sick before. One time it suffered a full reboot during the tense climax of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train. Another time it simply powered down amid the juicy bits of an Alessandra Torre novel (which turned out to be a warning to me to stop wasting time on trashy novels). But this recent bout had the makings of something more serious. My Kindle has always been perfectly healthy. I don’t even put a cover on it. As for spitting up words and sentences? Never.

Just to be safe, I got out of bed and quarantined my reader to the bathroom, closing the door softly behind me. I didn’t want any of the real books on my bedroom shelves to get infected. Early the next morning, I went to open the door to check on my little e-guy. Only I couldn’t because the door wouldn’t budge. I leaned in with a shoulder and it finally gave in, just enough so I could slip through. Imagine my disgust when I saw the mess before me. My e-reader barfed up at least four dozen books, piled all over the floor. The poor thing’s screen looked paler than a Brightness of 2 and was uncomfortably warm to the touch. The only image it could display was an Amazon Smile (encouraging, until I realized I was looking at it upside down).

It was time for professional help. I threw on my clothes, tucked my e-reader-patient into the leftover cover of a previous model, and headed to the car. But where to go? Of course! A brick-and-mortar Amazon Bookstore! As soon as I walked through the door, an eager young lady (right-side-up Amazon smile on her nametag) came forward to assist. I choked back tears as I explained the misery of the night before. She opened my Kindle’s cover gently, took a knowing peek at the dimming screen, and said, “Okay, let me just confirm your extended warranty.” I told her she wouldn’t find one, to which her whole demeanor changed. Suddenly she didn’t want to help me at all, and backed away slowly. I felt so… so… uninsured. Last resort, she pointed me to a nearby display of gleaming new Kindles and said, “You’d be better off junking yours and buying a new one.”

I got out of there as fast as I could. I mean, what sort of cruel, heartless person works at Amazon? Junk mine and buy a new one? Sorry, but all I could picture was my little e-reader flung carelessly into their alley dumpster; bookworms crawling all over it. It felt like a scene from a modern-day Fahrenheit 451.

Without insurance, my only other option was the free-clinic library down the street. A librarian is more of a specialist than an Amazon Bookstore employee anyway. But the regulations on the library’s front door made me pause. Yes, I keep my Kindle socially distanced from real books. Yes, my Kindle wears a mask outside of the house (even if it’s an older cover). But was my e-reader vaccinated? Heck if I knew. I couldn’t tell you the last time it went through a software update. So I could see how this was going to go down already. The librarian would check Settings and inform me my Kindle was several versions behind on its operating system. There’d be nothing she could do for me. Dejected, I drove back to my house.

It’s been a few days now and my Kindle is still listless (er, book-less) but at least it seems more chipper after a dose of power. It’s keeping down a few partial reads I’ve uploaded through “try a free sample”, as well as a Clippings doc in its library. But don’t assume we’re out of the woods just yet. I’m not ready to purchase any new books after that nightmare in the bathroom. I also neglected to mention my Kindle threw up its dictionary the night after I went to Amazon. Talk about a loss for words. I mean, dictionaries are bigger than almost any book, and a rich indulgence besides. There’s nothing left in your stomach after you’ve lost your dictionary.

I’m gonna go glass-half-full here and say my little e-guy’s gonna be okay. He’s up to a Brightness of 4 today. He’s holding a fairly focused, slightly bold version of the Palatino font. He retained my Ruta Sepetys novel and I’ve read some chapters without further hurled words. I even cleaned up the mess of “read” books he left behind in the bathroom. So learn from my experience, will you? Use an e-reader cover. Get a fresh software update. Keep the power boosted. And for gosh sakes; keep a reasonable distance from the hardcovers and paperbacks. E-readers are more susceptible to the bad stuff than you think.

Note: This is a work of fiction, pure and simple. Find nothing between the lines.

Lego Grand Piano – Update #1

The concert has begun! (my hesitant warm-up was captured in the post Let’s Make Music!) Bag #1 – of 21 bags of pieces – assembles to this rather odd shape. Imagine the keyboard running down the left side of the light-colored section, top left to bottom right.

There were a couple of tense moments when I couldn’t find the right pieces because I’d already assembled them in the wrong places. Unassemble. Redo. All good.

Running build time: 60 minutes. Musical accompaniment: Dvorak’s New World Symphony. Leftover pieces: 1

Let’s Make Music!

At the request of several readers, I’ve decided to bring you along on the adventure of building the Lego Grand Piano my wife gave me for Christmas. I’m hoping this music-making journey amounts to a pleasing “concert” instead of an arduous one. More akin to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy than Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee. No matter how difficult this “piece” ends up “playing”, I can assure you of one thing. It’s gonna take me a while; likely beyond when the snow stops flying in Colorado. 3,662 Lego pieces won’t snap together by my next blog post, nor the next one. I’ll give brief updates at the bottom of my other topics as I progress. Movements if you will, instead of the entire piano concerto all at once.

And with a tap-tap-tap of the conductor’s baton, the performance begins!

To start, we have an elegant 23″ x 15″ x 6″ cardboard box containing our unassembled piano. The box advertises the piano in three languages: English (Grand Piano), French (Le Piano a Queue), and Spanish (Piano de Cola). The box cautions I should be over the age of 18 and batteries aren’t included. Batteries? In a grand piano? But I digress…

The photos on the sides of the box tease the finished product. First and foremost, the piano really plays once I assemble the several thousand pieces. I don’t mean “play” as in a hidden music box with a digital soundtrack but “play” as in pressing the piano keys. And speaking of piano keys, Lego provides only 25. A real piano has 88. In other words, the beautiful music my grand piano plays will be more Chopsticks than Chopin. Makes sense because my Lego Grand Piano is only 12″ wide and 14″ deep. Suddenly my fingers feel fat.

When I remove that elegant box top, here’s what I see inside:

As expected, the Lego pieces are divided into small plastic bags. (On the left, that is. The right is a smaller box-within-the-box looking like a square piano. We’ll get to that in a minute.)

If I organize the bags so you can see them better, I come up with this:

The audience gasps, in awe of the complexity of the performance unfolding before them.

Okay, NOW I have concerns. First, the bag numbers start with “10”. Hey Lego, what happened to 1-9? Second, Bag 5 showed up among the double-digits like an orphan looking for a family. Pretty sure Bag 5 belongs securely in that black box to the right. Maybe Bag 5 was trying to escape.

At this point in the show, the phrase “missing pieces” tickles the pianist’s brain (but not the ivories).

I also find the set of bags in the photo to the right. I assume they pair with their partner-numbered bags when I get to that part of the concerto. But maybe they don’t. Maybe each of them is a little project unto itself.

Little beads of sweat populate the pianist’s forehead.

Yes, I’m nervous. I hastily put the bags back into the box (which suggests I’m already going backward with this project). But I do want to see what’s inside that black piano-wannabe box to the right. Have a look:

Well hello Bags 1-9! I also found a few more of those partner-numbered bags. But check out the disarray in the photo on the right. Here we have three more orphan bags and, shockingly, a few pieces that escaped their bags. What’s going on here?

The audience shifts uncomfortably in their seats as the pianist hesitates.

Finally, way at the bottom of the box, we have the pièce de résistance (Spanish: plato fuerte; English: main dish). Well hello, Mr. Instruction Manual. Weighing in at a hefty 2.2 pounds and boasting 532 pages of mind-numbing steps, Mr. Instruction Manual is easily the heaviest item in the box. He’s the equivalent of the phone book of a mid-sized city. Furthermore, the plastic bag he came in included a little slip of paper shouting, “WARNING: To avoid danger of suffocation keep this bag away from babies and children.” Listen Lego, I’m not worried about babies and children; I’m worried about me. I might be tempted to use that plastic bag to suffocate myself if I can’t complete my Grand Piano.

The pianist makes it this far into the performance without any faux pas’s (English: significant mistakes), but then I choose to open Mr. Instruction Manual to a random page. Terrible decision! Have a look:

Is this not an intimidating drawing? (Why yes, Dave, it is.) Does it look anything like a grand piano? (Why no, Dave, it does not.) Furthermore, you’re looking at Page 221, so we’re not even halfway through the build here. I’m edging towards terrified, Lego. Those pieces look small. Those pieces look many. And who’s to say the numbered bags make the one piece I’m looking for (amongst 3,361 of its plastic pals) any easier to find?

The pianist still hesitates, his hands shaking noticeably held just above the keyboard.

I wanted to finish this post with a photo of the first couple of pieces snapped together… I really did. I wanted you to believe my music-making was officially underway. But let’s be honest, my peek into the box where all those bags, orphans, and escaping pieces live, and the sheer size of Mr. Instruction Manual have me backing away from the keyboard (figuratively, followed by literally). Sorry folks, tonight’s performance isn’t quite ready for prime time. This pianist needs to change out of his sweat-drenched tuxedo into more comfortable clothing for now. Let’s take an intermission, shall we?

The audience heads to the lobby.